Activision: Downloads not as successful as wed like

Senior VP of Global Brand Management at Activision Will Kassoy has admitted that sales through digital distribution have not taken off as the publisher expected.

In an interview with Gamedaily.biz, Kassoy said that despite the fast-extrapolating success of downloadable content for games, boxed titles are still swamping digital sales.

I think episodic content hasn’t proven as successful as we’d like to see it, but we’d love to see that continued lifecycle with content online, whether it’s a full game for purchase, like our PC slate and we do sell through different partners, whether it’s Valve or IGN and others,” he said.

We continue to see sales there, but it’s relatively small in the grand scheme of things. But in terms of add-on pack type content, that’s been very successful for us, so we plan to take that approach for all our big franchises, and you’ll see more of that this year.

"You’re going to see a lot more of that in the future as well. Whether you could actually do deeper content, like full, playable levels which are more episodic in nature… I think as the business model fleshes out you’ll see more and more publishers go in that direction, including Activision.”